


Nothing/Something

by Hadithi



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 11:00:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20741114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hadithi/pseuds/Hadithi
Summary: The first Lapis Lazuli is made, and the Diamonds declare her perfect.She knows she is not.





	Nothing/Something

There was nothing.

And then there is Lapis Lazuli, the first Lapis Lazuli, and she knows everything she needs to know about herself. She is covered in dirt and dust and the lights are bright and there is thunderous applause. The applause is for her perfection, for her beauty, for she is the first of her kind and handcrafted by the diamonds. As they are perfection, so is she. 

A weaker perfection, though.

Blue Diamond looks at her, smiling. Approving. That is nice, but it is not enough. She is empty. She aches. She can feel the pool calling to her.

Her first words are, “My diamond,” but it is only so her request will be followed. “Take me to the water.”

“Of cour-” Blue begins.

“So you may show us your talents,” White says, a smile that does not crinkle her eyes stuck on her face. “In our honor, you will display your power?”

“Yes, my diamond.” Lapis salutes. It does not matter. This will get her to water. Without it, she is a hole. She is nothingness shimmering in the air, though others somehow see her hard light form. She is empty and they are screaming with delight.

“Enough formalities, White, please,” Blue says timidly. “It is a day for celebration. We should-”

Lapis Lazuli lets her mind fuzz, listening only for permission to go to the pool. Her senses are unfurling, as a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. There is so much water on the planet! Enough to fill two pools. It would only take a drop to make her something instead of nothing.

Permission! She rushes to the pool they have prepared. It is half the water in the world, and just big enough that all four diamonds could lay down in it. She dives beneath it and swirls it around her. She is something. She is alive! She can barely think for joy, for being immersed and caressed by her purpose. The cheers warm her now.

The light burns bright on the water’s surface. Ah. Yes. The other purpose. Joy bleeds away into meek satisfaction as water swirls up, dancing, raining on the cheering crowd. She sends the water away in a show for the diamonds. She brings it back for herself. She can live like this, surely, torn between the two.

“That’s enough,” says White.

It is _ not _. The wrongness of it makes her fists clench at her sides.

“Lapis Lazuli must return all water to the silos. We look forward to a long bath.”

“Of course, my diamonds.” She salutes, then asks. “Do I please you all? Am I perfection?”

“Yes,” says White. “We made your ourselves.”

“You’ll do,” says Yellow.

“You are lovely,” says Blue.

“I love her!” says Pink. “Can we make more in the tub?”

Lapis Lazuli knows everything she needs to know about herself. When the water slid across her gem, set in the center of her stomach, she felt it. The bump. She is not perfectly smooth. She is not perfection.

But she must return the water, in hopes that stronger (but fallible) beings will soon give it back. 

* * *

Lapis is calm and even. This is because, mostly, she is nothing. They do not often give her water. She does not know how long she is nothing, because she simply lets her mind fuzz and blur until she can be alive again.

She is being nothing on a ship in space when, suddenly, she is _something_. She doubles over, hands clutched around her gem as she aches and aches. She stumbles to the viewport window, where the need is coming from, where it tugs and rips at her with the rhythm of...of waves.

A dark blue planet in the vast darkness of space, with tiny little specks of green. She doesn’t care about that. Blue and blue and blue. She does not have words for the ache inside her. She does not have words for the thrill. She does not have words for the wonder. There is only one word, and it says it all to her.

“Ocean,” she murmurs.

“Kind of slow, isn’t she?” the aquamarine mutters to the pearl.

The pearl shrugs. “A Lapis Lazuli doesn’t need to be clever.”

“How long?” Lapis asks, feeling cold. It was the _ ocean_. How could they be so empty? Were they being nothing now, without the diamonds around? Are they what makes other gems something?

“Around ten hours,” says the pearl.

“Can you make it faster?”

“Blue Diamond charted our course!” Aquamarine snaps. “You just want to change it? Are you cracked? You ought to be.”

There’s a lot Lapis could say to that. Questions to be asked. They will not get her to the ocean faster. These gems do not care.

She goes to her corner and tries to be nothing. There is too much water. Instead, for ten hours, she is _ almost _ alive, and it is torture.

* * *

Lapis Lazuli steps into the ocean in front of three peridots, one hundred and six assorted quartzes, and an aquamarine with her pearl. The aquamarine waits several days, then calls her diamond. It is very dark.

“She, ah-”

“Speak, Aquamarine! You were not made to stutter!” Blue Diamond snarls across the com unit. Her face is fuzzy. They have never gone such a distance before. Aquamarine knows she is a dark blur on Blue’s screen.

“She vanished!” the pixie blurts. “We don’t understand! She just went to the water and...and I don’t know what could destroy the lapis in the ocean, but she must have been.”

“Quiet, please.” Blue holds up a hand. “I must think.”

A not quite as rich but bubbly voice giggles, “Maybe it’s a giant beast! Who cares if you’re heavy in the water, right? It could be huge. Or maybe something with a hard pointed tail that can crack a gem. Or maybe there’s an alien race and they have something to disturb her powers. Or maybe she ran away!”

The giggles are cut off with a loud crack and a gasp. “Go to your room, Pink. You are not acting like a diamond.”

“I’m sorry, White,” she whispers.

“It’s alright, Starlight. You simply must be better.”

It is quiet a long time. There is only the sound of static, that perhaps sounds a bit like waves. There are no waves to compare it to to say for sure.

“Let us evacuate the planet of lower gems, Blue. If something there can destroy our precious Lapis Lazuli, I believe we may have to deal with this ourselves.”

“Anything else to report, Aquamarine?”

“A-anything else?” she stutters. “I don’t think so.”

The ocean planet is facing its sun, but none of the three peridots, one hundred and six assorted quartzes, nor the aquamarine can see it. There is a heavy, deep water overhead. It is still. Against each gem is the calm, still jetstream of water, too thin to see on the fuzzy com.

“Perhaps you shouldn’t come!” Aquamarine gasps. “Please! Why endanger yourselves for a single gem?”

“You have your orders,” Blue says, and the com goes off.

Lapis Lazuli holds two halves of a pearl in her hands. “Do you think water can cut diamond as easily as this?”

Aquamarine’s voice trembled. “I did what you asked, Lazuli.”

She cocks her head. “You really would stand with them? I’d never order you, you know. You could stay here.”

“You cut my pearl!”

“Mmm.” Lapis thinks on this. Whether or not she encourages them to stay will not affect whether she keeps her ocean. The water flows back from the clustered gems. “Goodbye, then.”

The halved pearl drops into the sand, and the lapis lazuli slips back beneath the waves. They do not watch her this time. They rush aboard the ship and fly away, thankful for their lives.

They do not get to be thankful about it for long - only until the diamonds return to Homeworld.

* * *

Lapis Lazuli stand before four diamonds and they stare back. She should be bleached. She should be undone. She should be, at least, dematerialized. But there she stands, with her ankles in the surf, as perfect as ever.

“She’s too perfect,” Pink says in awe.

Blue and Yellow sush her while White speaks, “Do you know your purpose, Lapis Lazuli?”

“To shape with water,” she says. Her gem hums with pleasure. _ Yes, yes, yes. _ This is what she was born for. This was life.

“For whom?”

She shrugs. “For you, I suppose.”

“Ah,” White says calmly. “You see? This is a simple programming error. Too small to see, but her purpose to terraform is overdeveloped. We placed the desire to terraform next to her desire to serve us, and the latter has been overshadowed. It is a very simple fix. Just requires some sanding.”

Pink’s eyes go round. “I hate sanding.”

“Then plug your ears, Starlight, as I’ve said,” White hisses. “Lapis Lazuli, come home. We would hate to resort to force.”

White tugs. Pink tugs. Yellow and Blue push and pull but there is nothing to grab. Lapis Lazuli might as well be organic, for there is not a single spark of connection they can find to her.

Lapis Lazuli smiles, but it does not crinkle her eyes. “I know who I am. I know what I want. There is nothing for you to prey on.”

Yellow storms forward. “Then we’ll have a fight!”

The ocean rises, high and dark, and White screams. Her voice is cracked with terror and despair, “Not Yellow! She was first!”

Everything is frozen and still, with Lapis Lazuli’s water stream just a breath away from the shining gem on Yellow’s chest.

“Here’s something I don’t know,” Lapis whispers. “What is strong enough to cut a diamond? How did you carve those lovely facets, White?”

“The diamonds were not carved,” she says, voice barely a whisper.

“Would you like them to be?”

It is quiet. Lapis wonders if White Diamond has become nothing, surrounded by an ocean of water instead of adoring slaves. Would her mind blur and fuzz as she waited for it to return, or was the power close enough to take, leaving her agonized and aching?

“You ran away,” breathes Pink, voice full of wonder. “All by yourself. Won’t it be lonely? Wouldn’t you rather come home?”

This almost does it. For a moment, Lapis considers this, but no. There is only a pool there. “I have the ocean. What else do I need?”

“Love.” Pink smiles.

The moment is gone. Lapis Lazuli has never felt love. Only power. Only glory. Only purpose. She has spent too much time being nothing. She has only been alive for a few days now. She has spent years fuzzed out and blank, waiting for her purpose to arrive, and now she has it.

She has heard love spoken of only once before, from those very same lips, and it was followed by, “Can we make more?” If that is love, she wants none of it. She sets her water on the rest of them and they retreat to the ship.

Lapis Lazuli can simply enjoy being alive.

* * *

“It’s a rebellion,” White shudders.

“No, no!” Pink takes her hands, beaming. “It’s just a renegade! She’s all alone, White. She can’t do a thing to us. She’s trapped down there!”

White calms. Her shaking slows. Stops. She seizes Pink, dragging her close by her ruffles. A grit teeth, nightmarish smile comes to her face. “_ Never _say no to me again, Starlight.”

Pink shrieks as the color leeches from her hand. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

On her ship in space, and in the oceans down below, Lapis Lazuli and White Diamond are something again.


End file.
